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Holiday gift giving is very strange to me, in my culture we just give each other cold hard cash
Honestly still don’t have any practice with gift giving but I found a life hack: buying people things from the aquarium store
If you don’t like otter socks, I don’t want to be friends anyway
I’m not joking. My gifts to my nuclear family are actually cold hard cash.
One time, I was giving my aunt $100 in cash and at the same time she gave me $100 in cash. I gave it to her as a show of respect and she gave it to me as a show of care.
We got stuck not knowing what to do but we exchanged the notes as a show of symbolism lol
Maybe things have changed since, but it would be very weird to gift things to people back home. Very very weird. And to receive gifts as well.
Socks are a highly underrated gift. My boyfriend sent me 24 pair of zany socks for the Holidays. Best gift evahh.
@skinnylatte my family do a mixture of both, but exchanging gift vouchers for online shopping are increasingly common - as many of us have specialist hobbies and even if asked what you want for a gift its often hard to describe it or something relatively obscure (in my case I often buy electronic components and modules which are unusual for most people not into this hobby)
@vfrmedia i do now also gift things like hotel stays and electronics to my parents. Not really tied to festivities or events tho just nice things to do
Miguelbrasil 
@skinnylatte I do this when I'm an adult, but for the children in the family, especially the younger ones at present.
@skinnylatte i find the giving and the receiving intensely stressful. I like lists and buying off lists, and guidelines around who gets a gift.
@exlibrarykris @skinnylatte I was at a holiday fair last weekend and heard a guy explaining to one of the vendors that he traditionally gives a friend something completely not to her taste, making sure the seller had a generous returns and exchanges policy. She then exchanges it for another item she really likes.
It's sort of like a gift certificate, but the recipient has a box to open and, I'm guessing, a good laugh.
@skinnylatte my gift giving with my relatives is when I win the check at dinner
@skinnylatte sometimes those moments feel more like what I'm actually giving is *permission* to spend money on something they would generally not (or would feel guilty about)
@darkuncle I didn’t grow up with gift giving as a concept, so I don’t even have the framework to think about things that way!
@skinnylatte it is endlessly fascinating for me the things that people consider "normal” or "default" or just part of the landscape, that it turns out other cultures have entirely different takes on (or where it just never came up at all). Human societies are so interesting.
@skinnylatte I still feel like I'm bad at giving gifts, I tend to just ask my wife if she wants something and she does the same for me, but I'm trying to become one of those people who buys something small and interesting for people when I see it
It's taking me a new kind of awareness to be thoughtful in the way I want to be, but it feels good for me, so long as I don't try to be perfectionist about it
@skinnylatte
I posit that gift card are almost purely a grift and they only exist because most people who grew up in Western nations have learned discomfort around exchanging money as gifts.
@skinnylatte “Cash be with you.” “And also with you.”
@skinnylatte Otter socks are now on my list (hint, people!)
@skinnylatte I don't want to live in a world where there are no otter socks.
@skinnylatte I got my wife lemur socks last year. She got me bicycle socks like a decade ago, but no one's ever gotten me fun animal socks before..
@Andres4NY @skinnylatte
Before you all come crowding around, I need to remind you "Weird Socks" is a phrase I chose at random for my username.
@skinnylatte *nods*
The penguins are great and all, but... otters!
@skinnylatte I got a friend of mine two pairs of exceptionally padded, cold-weather work socks for their birthday as they get painful, cold feet easily... only to be given a pair of black & white stripey socks that were going to be used on a skeleton for halloween, which wouldn't fit me... so she got the thigh high stripeys too!
Not as warm, but probably more 
friendly!
@skinnylatte Museum shops are wonderful places to buy gifts. (And not just because I used to work in a museum.) You'll find things that aren't in other stores, like otter socks, and even odder socks. A portion of your purchase supports the museum. And recipients will think you're clever and intelligent for shopping at a museum.
Libraries, zoos, aquariums, etc., too.